A chain of tropical paradises mostly between Florida and South America. The Caribbean is known for cruises, beaches, resorts, and the occasional pirate infestation. Beware of The Bermuda Triangle, while you're at it, too. Includes Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and others.

Calypso or rhumba music is constantly being played, there's free fruit everywhere, everyone is constantly drunk and/or high, and may have a pet parrot. Nobody does any work, they just sit on the beach sipping fruity little drinks with umbrellas out of coconuts. At night, the careless or unlucky might see a voodoo ceremony.

Pirate attacks have to be dealt with, even in modern times. Except now they use machine guns instead of cutlasses and are less romanticized.

This trope excludes the Latin Caribbean islands such as Cuba and Puerto Rico, and includes the northern South American countries of Guyana and Suriname. Jamaica is a specialized case, mostly due to a perceived abundance of Reggae and Rastafari folks with a penchant for the "Wisdom Weed". The Bahamas is often mistaken for Jamaica much to the chagrin of BOTH countries' citizens. This is despite, however, a minority of Rastafarians in Jamaica.

If you find white people here in contemporary times they're likely to be sitting on a yacht, playing croquet or cricket, or lounging around in white suits and reading a newspaper in the lobby of a hotel that's seen better days. This is often used as the final scene of a movie, illustrating that a Karma Houdini character made a successful Run for the Border.

Also known as The Spanish Main. Because it used to be full of Spaniards and their loot.

Examples:

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Advertising

The commercials for Malibu rum seem to invoke this trope, despite the fact that Malibu is located in California. The rum itself, however, was invented in Curacao.

Commercials for 7Up from the early 80s featured a guy like this (portrayed by Geoffrey Holder, believe it or not) emphasizing that the beverage had no caffeine, artificial flavors, or artificial colors.

Foxtrot: Roger, Bumbling Dad extraordinaire, once took his family to the Caribbeany resort- a place where you can drive or fly, as it's located a thousand miles from the nearest ocean. Other highlights include the steel drum concert being a guy with a synthesizer ("Oops. Didn't mean to hit "bagpipes" just then.") and a romantic sunset that's interrupted with a giant "Swipe Credit Card To Continue" message every five minutes.

The movie Captain Ron, at one point, has the protagonist's children partying in a festival on an unnamed Caribbean islandnote The movie was filmed in Puerto Rico, if that helps while their parents are arrested for smuggling revolutionaries onto the island. Later, they run afoul of the "Pirates of the Caribbean", as Captain Ron calls them, and get their boat stolen at gunpoint. (This movie was made before the Disney movie trilogy, so viewers will awkwardly hear the children's dad saying Captain Ron "went to Disneyland too many times," referring to the ride on which the movie was based).

Captain Blood is set in the Caribbean; Jamaica and Tortuga are particularized.

Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys, played straight. (Yes. Neil Gaiman played something straight.) Well, kind of. Apparently people in the Caribbean are mad about country music, and hand out limes to passersby. Although Fat Charlie was only given the lime because he expressed disbelief that limes grew there, so he was given one. Other than that no limes were handed about, except by Fat Charlie himself who became unusually attached to the lime, and proposed to Daisy with it. It Makes Sense in Context.

Live Action TV

Harry Maybourne escapes to such a place in one epsiode of Stargate SG-1.

Part one of the Criminal Minds two-parter, "The Fisher King", takes place with Derek Morgan and Elle Greenaway vacationing in Jamaica, with scenes invoking this trope.

Steel drum music is another bit of Trinidad & Tobago culture that is commonly used as a generic "island" music cue in popular culture. Notice that "Kokomo" uses steel drums and mentions a dozen tropical locales but not Trinidad or Tobago.

Parts of the album Waiting For Cousteau by Jean-Michel Jarre which was recorded on the island of Trinidad include a big local steel drum band. "Calypso" even comes with a somehow Caribbean groove.

Championship Wrestling From Florida was also a launching point into the Caribbean for the National Wrestling Alliance, also running shows in Puerto Rico, The Bahamas and The Dominican Republic.

An aspect of Pedro Morales's gimmick as the first Latin American to win a recognized world title in pro wrestling.

This was basically the video hyping RazorRamon's WWF debut, showing him strolling through an open air Cuban Market. repeated almost verbatim for Carlito's WWE debut video, just in Puerto Rico.

In 2011, Florida based promotion Ring Warriors became a new millennium springboard for the NWA to promote events throughout the Caribbean. Several wrestlers were brought in from the region and the Bahamas division from the 1980s was reestablished during a tour there. The wrestlers stuck around but the Bahamas title was retired after Ring Warriors left the NWA.

One goal of The World Wrestling League was to increase global awareness of Caribbean Pro Wrestling. This became less pronounced when they started running their own shows in addition to collaborative events, causing the Puerto Rican version of the World Wrestling Council and Dominican Wrestling Entertainment to leave the WWL, which in turn lead to WWL focuse more on competing with it's would be rivals.

Radio

The original radio version of Bold Venture was set in pre-revolution Cuba (and made heavy use of calypso music). The television version (made in 1959) moved the action to Trinidad.

The trolls of World of Warcraft seem to blend both this trope and Mayincatec. The Darkspear have Jamaican accents and practice a fantasy equivalent of voodoo, while other tribes practice blood sorcery similar to human sacrifice and convene around ziggurats.

The Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers episode "Battle of the Bulge" features three fruit-devouring, evil-doing Jamaican fruit bats complete with the matching accent.

In a Codename: Kids Next Door episode, the hamsters go on a vacation at Jamaica's KND sector. The operatives are very laid-back to the point of not knowing what an emergency is, and persistently offer mango smoothies to everyone. One of the operatives there is your stereotypical Jamaican who hilariously seems to be the only one who can stomach Lizzie's horrible cooking.

"It's PIE time, mon! ...o.o That be some GOOD pie, mon!"

Futurama has Hermes, who is as Jamaican as they come, being a former limbo champ and constantly saying "Mon".

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